{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@croobat",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/@croobat",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@croobat/110555396151753320",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/10thingsilikerightnow\">#<span>10thingsilikerightnow</span></a> </p><p>0. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/foss\">#<span>foss</span></a><br />1. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/archlinux\">#<span>archlinux</span></a><br />2. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/lemmy\">#<span>lemmy</span></a><br />3. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/fullstackopen\">#<span>fullstackopen</span></a><br />4. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/rust\">#<span>rust</span></a><br />5. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a><br />6. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/dwm\">#<span>dwm</span></a><br />7. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/astro\">#<span>astro</span></a><br />8. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/bicycling\">#<span>bicycling</span></a><br />9. <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/mastodon\">#<span>mastodon</span></a></p>",
        "text": "#10thingsilikerightnow 0. #foss\n1. #archlinux\n2. #lemmy\n3. #fullstackopen\n4. #rust\n5. #indieweb\n6. #dwm\n7. #astro\n8. #bicycling\n9. #mastodon"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-16T18:51:09+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37960865",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "#indieweb",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://techlifeweb.com/blog/2023/06/2023-06-16-post-1731/",
    "content": {
        "html": "Tried to follow a Lemmy account via BridgyFed and it failed hard. <a class=\"p-category\" href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/indieweb\">#indieweb</a> \"IndieAuth verification failed: 404\". It should be set up right as I've used it before plus indiewebify.me checks out.",
        "text": "Tried to follow a Lemmy account via BridgyFed and it failed hard. #indieweb \"IndieAuth verification failed: 404\". It should be set up right as I've used it before plus indiewebify.me checks out."
    },
    "published": "2023-06-16T17:31:37+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37960055",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

Jeena jeena.net

{
    "type": "entry",
    "published": "2023-06-16T15:14:15Z",
    "url": "https://jeena.net/notes/1364",
    "content": {
        "text": "Now that #reddit is going away I finally installed a #fediverse alternative #lemmy for myself: https://jemmy.jeena.net/post/50",
        "html": "<p></p><p>Now that #reddit is going away I finally installed a #fediverse alternative #lemmy for myself: <a href=\"https://jemmy.jeena.net/post/50\">https://jemmy.jeena.net/post/50</a></p>"
    },
    "author": {
        "type": "card",
        "name": "Jeena",
        "url": "https://jeena.net/",
        "photo": "https://jeena.net/avatar.jpg"
    },
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37957893",
    "_source": "201",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@postroutine",
        "url": "https://framapiaf.org/@postroutine",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://framapiaf.org/@postroutine/110553308166040109",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>For this friday, do you have great indieweb websites to share ?</p><p><a href=\"https://framapiaf.org/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "For this friday, do you have great indieweb websites to share ?#indieweb"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-16T10:00:09+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37957832",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

Ben Werdmuller werd.io/profile/benwerd

Decentralization isn't enough. It's about people.

{
    "type": "entry",
    "published": "2023-06-16T14:27:56+00:00",
    "url": "https://werd.io/2023/decentralization-isnt-enough-its-about-people",
    "name": "Decentralization isn't enough. It's about people.",
    "content": {
        "text": "I posted a link the other day to this sobering essay about how the promised migration to Mastodon didn\u2019t go as hoped. It makes some assumptions about what people were hoping for in the first place, but if you were (as I was) hoping that this would be a moment that federated social media might become mainstream, I think its arguments are correct. I wish they weren\u2019t.So what does Mastodon bring to the table in addition to Twitter, that might justify someone deciding to take the plunge and move to it? There are a few unique things about the platform, but they generally fall into the broad category of \u201cthings users don\u2019t care about\u201d. Chief among these is decentralisation.I\u2019ve made this argument before: for most people, decentralization is not a selling point. For a significant number of people, not being Twitter as run by Elon Musk is a selling point. And while there are certainly arguments to be made about how decentralized networks are less likely to fall prey to the same fate, the fact of the matter is, most people don\u2019t care. Most people don\u2019t understand what decentralization even really is, and nor should they have to.Decentralized protocols are infrastructure in the same way that servers are infrastructure. Nobody cares if a traditional social network is built on AWS or Google Cloud. What they care about is the community: can they follow people they\u2019re interested in, can they engage in great conversations, potentially find an audience for the things they make, and do all of this safely and without abuse.Mastodon has, so far, not done well on this front. People really do find it hard to use. And when they do make it on, the number of \u201creply guys\u201d \u2014 people who respond in an unwanted and condescending way to peoples\u2019 posts, particularly those written by women \u2014 is sometimes off the charts. Finally but by no means least, there\u2019s a disturbing current of anti-Blackness that extends from the covert racism of asking people to hide their lived experiences behind a content warning to overt white supremacy. For many people, it is not a welcoming place.Dr Johnathan Flowers, who studies the philosophy of technology, gave a great interview last year that covers this topic in detail. It\u2019s very difficult for me to pull a representative quote out; instead, I recommend that you read or listen to the whole piece.Indeed, when I posted the link, I got some interesting replies that expressed the sentiment: it\u2019s good that not everyone can use Mastodon. Sometimes a higher barrier to entry leads to a better quality of community. We never wanted everyone to move over; we just wanted the right people to move over.Not a good look when many of the people who are put off from using the community are people of color, women, the disabled, and people with few resources. I\u2019m strongly opposed to this sentiment: I think for social media to truly be useful, it must be welcoming, inclusive, and accessible.There\u2019s another reason why I want user-aligned social media to be readily accessible. (I\u2019m struggling for a good term for this, as you can tell: it\u2019s not decentralized social media, because decentralization is just a functional means to an end. What do you call something that is inherently supportive of the people who use it and their underlying interests? Democratic? Progressive?) Social media is intrinsically involved in the very dark moment in democracy that we\u2019re living through; it has empowered populism and the rise of a militant far right. We need the online spaces that most of us use to not be run by people who are active supporters of fascism at worst and agnostic to it at best.Social media helped bring about Trump. Right now Elon Musk is using Twitter in the same way Rupert Murdoch uses his media empire. Facebook does not look like it is eager to avoid the mistakes of its past if it means forgoing profit. There has to be a strong, inclusive alternative to these platforms, and right now there simply isn\u2019t one.None of this is to say that the underlying protocols are bad. I love ActivityPub. I think they\u2019re a fantastic way to build new platforms. And I think that\u2019s exactly what we need: new platforms, in the human sense, built with the participation of the communities they support. It\u2019s not nearly enough to build a functional Twitter clone. Technology is never enough. We need to build communities in new, participative ways that ensure everyone\u2019s voice is heard. We need to share equity. We need to ensure that people with few resources are able to onboard. We need to ensure that everyone can feel safe as they express their true selves. Otherwise, to be frank, I don\u2019t see the point.I think it absolutely can be done, but lately I\u2019ve been feeling like Mastodon itself is not yet the answer. The big question, then, is: what do we do next?",
        "html": "<p>I posted a link the other day to this sobering essay about how <a href=\"https://blog.bloonface.com/2023/06/12/why-did-the-twittermigration-fail/\">the promised migration to Mastodon didn\u2019t go as hoped</a>. It makes some assumptions about what people were hoping for in the first place, but if you were (as I was) hoping that this would be a moment that federated social media might become mainstream, I think its arguments are correct. I wish they weren\u2019t.</p><blockquote><p>So what does Mastodon bring to the table in addition to Twitter, that might justify someone deciding to take the plunge and move to it? There are a few unique things about the platform, but they generally fall into the broad category of \u201cthings users don\u2019t care about\u201d. Chief among these is decentralisation.</p></blockquote><p><a href=\"https://werd.io/2023/this-moment-isnt-about-decentralization\">I\u2019ve made this argument before</a>: for most people, decentralization is not a selling point. For a significant number of people, not being Twitter as run by Elon Musk is a selling point. And while there are certainly arguments to be made about how decentralized networks are less likely to fall prey to the same fate, the fact of the matter is, most people don\u2019t care. Most people don\u2019t understand what decentralization even really is, and nor should they have to.</p><p>Decentralized protocols are infrastructure in the same way that servers are infrastructure. Nobody cares if a traditional social network is built on AWS or Google Cloud. What they care about is the community: can they follow people they\u2019re interested in, can they engage in great conversations, potentially find an audience for the things they make, and do all of this safely and without abuse.</p><p>Mastodon has, so far, not done well on this front. People really do find it hard to use. And when they do make it on, the number of <a href=\"https://mashable.com/article/twitter-reply-guys\">\u201creply guys\u201d</a> \u2014 people who respond in an unwanted and condescending way to peoples\u2019 posts, particularly those written by women \u2014 is sometimes off the charts. Finally but by no means least, there\u2019s a disturbing current of anti-Blackness that extends from the covert racism of asking people to hide their lived experiences behind a content warning to overt white supremacy. For many people, it is not a welcoming place.</p><p>Dr Johnathan Flowers, who studies the philosophy of technology, <a href=\"https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/\">gave a great interview last year that covers this topic in detail</a>. It\u2019s very difficult for me to pull a representative quote out; instead, I recommend that you read or listen to the whole piece.</p><p>Indeed, when I posted the link, I got some interesting replies that expressed the sentiment: it\u2019s <em>good</em> that not everyone can use Mastodon. Sometimes a higher barrier to entry leads to a better quality of community. We never wanted everyone to move over; we just wanted the <em>right</em> people to move over.</p><p>Not a good look when many of the people who are put off from using the community are people of color, women, the disabled, and people with few resources. I\u2019m strongly opposed to this sentiment: I think for social media to truly be useful, it must be welcoming, inclusive, and accessible.</p><p>There\u2019s another reason why I want user-aligned social media to be readily accessible. (I\u2019m struggling for a good term for this, as you can tell: it\u2019s not <em>decentralized</em> social media, because decentralization is just a functional means to an end. What do you call something that is inherently supportive of the people who use it and their underlying interests? Democratic? Progressive?) Social media is intrinsically involved in the very dark moment in democracy that we\u2019re living through; it has empowered populism and the rise of a militant far right. We need the online spaces that most of us use to not be run by people who are active supporters of fascism at worst and agnostic to it at best.</p><p>Social media helped bring about Trump. Right now Elon Musk is using Twitter in the same way Rupert Murdoch uses his media empire. Facebook does not look like it is eager to avoid the mistakes of its past if it means forgoing profit. There has to be a strong, inclusive alternative to these platforms, and right now there simply isn\u2019t one.</p><p>None of this is to say that the underlying protocols are bad. I love ActivityPub. I think they\u2019re a fantastic way to build new platforms. And I think that\u2019s exactly what we need: <em>new platforms</em>, in the human sense, built with the participation of the communities they support. It\u2019s not nearly enough to build a functional Twitter clone. Technology is never enough. </p><p>We need to build communities in new, participative ways that ensure everyone\u2019s voice is heard. We need to share equity. We need to ensure that people with few resources are able to onboard. We need to ensure that everyone can feel safe as they express their true selves. Otherwise, to be frank, I don\u2019t see the point.</p><p>I think it absolutely can be done, but lately I\u2019ve been feeling like Mastodon itself is not yet the answer. The big question, then, is: what do we do next?</p>"
    },
    "author": {
        "type": "card",
        "name": "Ben Werdmuller",
        "url": "https://werd.io/profile/benwerd",
        "photo": "https://werd.io/file/5d388c5fb16ea14aac640912/thumb.jpg"
    },
    "post-type": "article",
    "_id": "37957249",
    "_source": "191",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@jxn",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/@jxn",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@jxn/110554333919650017",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>What <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/lemmy\">#<span>lemmy</span></a> or <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/kbin\">#<span>kbin</span></a> server are all the cool <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/FOSS\">#<span>FOSS</span></a> and <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a>  kids going to?  I mostly want to find communities talking about self-hosted, dev/ops, open-source, science news and of course Ange Postecoglou.</p><p><a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/reddit\">#<span>reddit</span></a></p>",
        "text": "What #lemmy or #kbin server are all the cool #FOSS and #indieweb  kids going to?  I mostly want to find communities talking about self-hosted, dev/ops, open-source, science news and of course Ange Postecoglou.#reddit"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-16T14:21:01+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37957247",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@ApisNecros",
        "url": "https://ioc.exchange/@ApisNecros",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://ioc.exchange/@ApisNecros/110554197025511817",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Just bought my third domain name. And this time I'm actually going to use it! Am I a true <a href=\"https://ioc.exchange/tags/techie\">#<span>techie</span></a> yet?</p><p><a href=\"https://ioc.exchange/tags/WebDev\">#<span>WebDev</span></a> <a href=\"https://ioc.exchange/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Just bought my third domain name. And this time I'm actually going to use it! Am I a true #techie yet?#WebDev #IndieWeb"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-16T13:46:12+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37957248",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@renegadejade",
        "url": "https://hachyderm.io/@renegadejade",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://hachyderm.io/@renegadejade/110553942884474761",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Is <a href=\"https://hachyderm.io/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> compatible with fediverse/activitypub?</p><p>(I\u2019m not sure this is even the right question to ask, tbh)</p><p>I want to host a blog at my own domain for long-form writing, and when I post it, have a meta description/excerpt post to my Mastodon account but more importantly, I would like blog post tags to be discoverable via fediverse hashtags. </p><p>Is this a thing?</p>",
        "text": "Is #indieweb compatible with fediverse/activitypub?(I\u2019m not sure this is even the right question to ask, tbh)I want to host a blog at my own domain for long-form writing, and when I post it, have a meta description/excerpt post to my Mastodon account but more importantly, I would like blog post tags to be discoverable via fediverse hashtags. Is this a thing?"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-16T12:41:34+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37955448",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@david",
        "url": "https://tech.lgbt/@david",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://tech.lgbt/@david/110549932962341103",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Next week I'll be giving a presentation about <a href=\"https://tech.lgbt/tags/WordPress\">#<span>WordPress</span></a> and the <a href=\"https://tech.lgbt/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a>. I will mainly be presenting resources created by others, but also just sharing general mindsets around owning your own content online off of centralized platforms</p><p><a href=\"https://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294071517/\"><span>https://www.</span><span>meetup.com/learn-wordpress-onl</span><span>ine-workshops/events/294071517/</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Next week I'll be giving a presentation about #WordPress and the #IndieWeb. I will mainly be presenting resources created by others, but also just sharing general mindsets around owning your own content online off of centralized platformshttps://www.meetup.com/learn-wordpress-online-workshops/events/294071517/"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-15T19:41:47+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37947180",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@ross",
        "url": "https://social.rossabaker.com/@ross",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.rossabaker.com/@ross/110549266792297906",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Favorite link checkers?  Lychee works great, but insists on reading /etc/resolv.conf, even in offline mode, which doesn't work in my CI.</p><p><a href=\"https://social.rossabaker.com/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Favorite link checkers?  Lychee works great, but insists on reading /etc/resolv.conf, even in offline mode, which doesn't work in my CI.#indieweb"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-15T16:52:22+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37944638",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@janboddez",
        "url": "https://indieweb.social/@janboddez",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://indieweb.social/@janboddez/110547921670174314",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Just thinking \u2026 If you only used IndieBlocks\u2019 \u201cnotes\u201d for plain-text statuses, and only used its \u201clike\u201d custom post type for bookmarks (and renamed its slug to `bookmarks`) and replaced the Like block in its template for a Bookmark block \u2026 then you\u2019d have added both a Twitter clone and a Delicious clone to your WordPress blog.</p><p>Anyway, that\u2019ll be all.</p><p><a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/indieblocks\">#<span>indieblocks</span></a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> <a href=\"https://indieweb.social/tags/wordpress\">#<span>wordpress</span></a></p><p>(<a href=\"https://bddz.be/0kN\"><span>https://</span><span>bddz.be/0kN</span><span></span></a>)</p>",
        "text": "Just thinking \u2026 If you only used IndieBlocks\u2019 \u201cnotes\u201d for plain-text statuses, and only used its \u201clike\u201d custom post type for bookmarks (and renamed its slug to `bookmarks`) and replaced the Like block in its template for a Bookmark block \u2026 then you\u2019d have added both a Twitter clone and a Delicious clone to your WordPress blog.Anyway, that\u2019ll be all.#indieblocks #indieweb #wordpress(https://bddz.be/0kN)"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-15T11:10:18+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37939500",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

Jeremy Keith adactio.com

{
    "type": "entry",
    "published": "2023-06-15T08:39:57Z",
    "url": "https://adactio.com/links/20248",
    "category": [
        "blogging",
        "writing",
        "sharing",
        "personal",
        "publishing",
        "indieweb",
        "reading",
        "anniversary"
    ],
    "bookmark-of": [
        "https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/fifteen-or-one-third"
    ],
    "content": {
        "text": "Fifteen, or one-third | A Working Library\n\n\n\nMandy\u2019s been blogging for fifteen years:\n\n\n  The new stuff sits next to the old but doesn\u2019t supplant it, doesn\u2019t shove it out of the way. Each new post lays atop the next like sediment, and all the old layers remain exposed for you to meander through, with their mediocre sentences and lapsed claims, all the sloppy thinking ever on display. It\u2019s a great exercise in humility, keeping a blog for this many years. But in exchange for the keen awareness of how far I still have to go as a writer, I have the space to keep going. I have the home to keep coming back to. And I will. I will return, again and again.",
        "html": "<h3>\n<a class=\"p-name u-bookmark-of\" href=\"https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/fifteen-or-one-third\">\nFifteen, or one-third | A Working Library\n</a>\n</h3>\n\n<p>Mandy\u2019s been blogging for fifteen years:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n  <p>The new stuff sits next to the old but doesn\u2019t supplant it, doesn\u2019t shove it out of the way. Each new post lays atop the next like sediment, and all the old layers remain exposed for you to meander through, with their mediocre sentences and lapsed claims, all the sloppy thinking ever on display. It\u2019s a great exercise in humility, keeping a blog for this many years. But in exchange for the keen awareness of how far I still have to go as a writer, I have the space to keep going. I have the home to keep coming back to. And I will. I will return, again and again.</p>\n</blockquote>"
    },
    "author": {
        "type": "card",
        "name": "Jeremy Keith",
        "url": "https://adactio.com/",
        "photo": "https://adactio.com/images/photo-150.jpg"
    },
    "post-type": "bookmark",
    "_id": "37938825",
    "_source": "2",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@villasbc",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/@villasbc",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@villasbc/110545618820612000",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p><span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://social.coop/@hollie\">@<span>hollie</span></a></span> and to be fair to all the people working on <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> stuff (tools, tutorials, talks etc),  having it more accessible is pretty much one of the most discussed pain points... ever. I for one see this discussed a lot.</p>",
        "text": "@hollie and to be fair to all the people working on #IndieWeb stuff (tools, tutorials, talks etc),  having it more accessible is pretty much one of the most discussed pain points... ever. I for one see this discussed a lot."
    },
    "published": "2023-06-15T01:24:39+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37935105",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@villasbc",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/@villasbc",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@villasbc/110545609820250109",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p><span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://social.coop/@hollie\">@<span>hollie</span></a></span> people are generally not interested in work, just benefits. If you can't convince someone to invest a few clicks and keystrokes to create an account on micro.blog, maybe that's someone who wants to be left and that should be OK too.</p><p>The <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> can be accessible but there's no reason to make it ubiquitous.</p>",
        "text": "@hollie people are generally not interested in work, just benefits. If you can't convince someone to invest a few clicks and keystrokes to create an account on micro.blog, maybe that's someone who wants to be left and that should be OK too.The #IndieWeb can be accessible but there's no reason to make it ubiquitous."
    },
    "published": "2023-06-15T01:22:22+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37935106",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@rmdes",
        "url": "https://mstdn.social/@rmdes",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mstdn.social/@rmdes/110544645845927471",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p><span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://social.coop/@hollie\">@<span>hollie</span></a></span> a good step before things gets more organized is <a href=\"https://micro.blog\"><span>https://</span><span>micro.blog</span><span></span></a></p><p>Allows anyone to create content and have a presence on Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr while owning their data, so that no matter what the future brings, you can always move the data into a new solution, while still using it as a client to the social web.</p><p>I have tried many different tools to jump on the <a href=\"https://mstdn.social/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a> ship and this is clearly the easiest and fun to use.</p>",
        "text": "@hollie a good step before things gets more organized is https://micro.blogAllows anyone to create content and have a presence on Mastodon, Bluesky, Nostr while owning their data, so that no matter what the future brings, you can always move the data into a new solution, while still using it as a client to the social web.I have tried many different tools to jump on the #indieweb ship and this is clearly the easiest and fun to use."
    },
    "published": "2023-06-14T21:17:12+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37933051",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

Ben Werdmuller werd.io/profile/benwerd

Web 2.0 may finally be democratized

{
    "type": "entry",
    "published": "2023-06-14T19:55:46+00:00",
    "url": "https://werd.io/2023/web-20-may-finally-be-democratized",
    "name": "Web 2.0 may finally be democratized",
    "content": {
        "text": "If you take investment to build your product, you will one day need to find a way to repay those investors. That might be a risk that you need to take because you otherwise wouldn't be able to build the thing you want to. But it's a key part of the equation.With no outside money, only people with copious spare time or disposable wealth can afford to build software of any complexity. I don\u2019t see that as a desirable outcome, not just because it\u2019s fundamentally unfair, but also because we then won\u2019t get software built by people with a wider range of lived experiences, which means it will be less useful overall. We therefore need to have investors or grant-making institutions in the mix. Venture capital, though often maligned, has allowed a lot of services we all use to exist.The trouble is, the need for exponential growth or revenue sometimes pit platforms against their users, which is death for a Web 2.0 business.Web 2.0 businesses work by making their user-bases into part of the machine. They produce network effects, which means that the product becomes more valuable as more people use it. Reddit with one user is not particularly useful; Reddit with millions is a much more compelling place to converse.For years, those user-bases have just sort of gone along with it. There have been minor skirmishes from time to time, but the utility of the platform itself has generally been enough to keep people engaging.Twitter\u2019s implosion changed that. Millions of people decamped from the platform to places like Mastodon \u2014 and some of them to nowhere at all. More than creating a problem for Twitter and an opportunity for anyone working on alternatives, this mass movement of users also opened the floodgates for more direct action among Web 2.0 users.Over 87% of subreddits - the themed discussion communities that make up Reddit - went on strike this week in protest of new API policies that price most apps out of the market. When CEO Steve Huffman issued a tone-deaf internal memo suggesting that this, too, would pass, they decided to extend the action. In effect, the vast majority of the site has been shut down. Huffman lost the respect of the people who had, up to then, been willingly part of his machine.In the old days, we talked about Web 2.0 \u201cdemocratizing\u201d industries. Blogging democratized publishing. Flickr democratized photo discovery and use. Delicious democratized \u2026 bookmarks, I guess? Because these use cases represented a move away from centralized publishing models where an elite few controlled who could be seen and heard, they were democratized, in a sense. But the platforms themselves continued to be built, run, and funded by an elite few. There was no democratization of power or equity. As has long been the case with mass media, the users were not the customers; they were the product being sold.While there were always people who discussed these obvious harms and advocated for solutions \u2014 long-time members of the indieweb community and its cousins, for example \u2014 these were not mainstream topics. The cracks really began to show after the 2016 election, when Facebook finally caught some criticism for its flippancy towards democracy. Subsequently, stories about its role in genocide, its misrepresentation of its own engagement analytics to news organizations, and other harms became more widespread.But while there has always been some sporadic direct action \u2014 there have been a few third-party tools that have let people delete their content and connections from Facebook, for example; LiveJournal users finally left en masse after its sale to a Russian media company which enacted homophobic and anti-politics policies \u2014 we haven\u2019t seen anything on the level of this year\u2019s. Millions of Twitter users quit following Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition, and now most of Reddit is offline.Reddit is the perfect testbed for this kind of collective user action. Each individual subreddit is controlled by a set of moderators who have the power to turn their communities off \u2014 which is exactly what they\u2019ve done. But Reddit isn\u2019t the only platform with this dynamic: a 2021 report by the NYU Governance Lab suggested that 1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month. Admins of those groups have remarkable power over the Facebook platform.This has the potential to be a radical change. Once users realized that they have power as a community, the fundamental dynamics of these platforms changes. You can no longer engage in adversarial business practices: there\u2019s nothing wrong with making money, but it will need to be in a way that aligns with the people who give a platform its value.Not only should that give the leadership of more established Web 2.0 businesses pause, it should inform early decisions by both investors and founders of any new collaborative platform on the internet. An adversarial business model, or a hand-wavey one like \u201cselling data\u201d, has the potential to deeply harm the value of a venture that depends on its users further down the road.The health, trust, and safety of a platform\u2019s community is paramount. The potential for collective action means that, finally, users can have some say in how the platforms they use are run. We may even see more platforms move to co-operative and community-owned models as a way to ensure that they remain aligned with their ecosystems: it\u2019s not just good ethics, but it\u2019s good business sense in a world where users, admins, and third-party app developers understand that they have the power to leave.We may even see moderator\u2019s unions, providing collective bargaining, advice, and other benefits for people who run communities across platforms. Perhaps even bonuses like negotiated healthcare that industrial unions have long provided. There\u2019s honestly no reason why not: these people are the direct drivers of millions upon millions of dollars for platform owners. They have power; they just have to stand up and use it.",
        "html": "<p><img src=\"https://werd.io/file/648a1ca905c13f97c3062fe2/thumb.jpg\" alt=\"Graffiti on a wall that reads: let's strike\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" /></p><p>If you take investment to build your product, you will one day need to find a way to repay those investors. That might be a risk that you need to take because you otherwise wouldn't be able to build the thing you want to. But it's a key part of the equation.</p><p>With no outside money, only people with copious spare time or disposable wealth can afford to build software of any complexity. I don\u2019t see that as a desirable outcome, not just because it\u2019s fundamentally unfair, but also because we then won\u2019t get software built by people with a wider range of lived experiences, which means it will be less useful overall. We therefore need to have investors or grant-making institutions in the mix. Venture capital, though often maligned, has allowed a lot of services we all use to exist.</p><p>The trouble is, the need for exponential growth or revenue sometimes pit platforms against their users, which is death for a Web 2.0 business.</p><p>Web 2.0 businesses work by making their user-bases into part of the machine. They produce <em>network effects</em>, which means that the product becomes more valuable as more people use it. Reddit with one user is not particularly useful; Reddit with millions is a much more compelling place to converse.</p><p>For years, those user-bases have just sort of <em>gone along with it</em>. There have been minor skirmishes from time to time, but the utility of the platform itself has generally been enough to keep people engaging.</p><p>Twitter\u2019s implosion changed that. Millions of people decamped from the platform to places like Mastodon \u2014 and some of them to nowhere at all. More than creating a problem for Twitter and an opportunity for anyone working on alternatives, this mass movement of users also opened the floodgates for more direct action among Web 2.0 users.</p><p>Over 87% of subreddits - the themed discussion communities that make up Reddit - went on strike this week in protest of new API policies that price most apps out of the market. When CEO Steve Huffman issued <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/13/23759559/reddit-internal-memo-api-pricing-changes-steve-huffman\">a tone-deaf internal memo suggesting that this, too, would pass</a>, they decided to extend the action. In effect, the vast majority of the site has been shut down. Huffman lost the respect of the people who had, up to then, been willingly part of his machine.</p><p>In the old days, we talked about Web 2.0 \u201cdemocratizing\u201d industries. Blogging democratized publishing. Flickr democratized photo discovery and use. Delicious democratized \u2026 bookmarks, I guess? Because these use cases represented a move away from centralized publishing models where an elite few controlled who could be seen and heard, they <em>were</em> democratized, in a sense. But the platforms themselves continued to be built, run, and funded by an elite few. There was no democratization of power or equity. As has long been the case with mass media, <a href=\"https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/\">the users were not the customers; they were the product being sold</a>.</p><p>While there were always people who discussed these obvious harms and advocated for solutions \u2014 long-time members of the <a href=\"https://indieweb.org\">indieweb</a> community and its cousins, for example \u2014 these were not mainstream topics. The cracks really began to show after the 2016 election, when Facebook finally caught some criticism for its flippancy towards democracy. Subsequently, stories about <a href=\"https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/\">its role in genocide</a>, its <a href=\"https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html\">misrepresentation of its own engagement analytics to news organizations</a>, and other harms became more widespread.</p><p>But while there has always been some sporadic direct action \u2014 there have been a few third-party tools that have let people delete their content and connections from Facebook, for example; LiveJournal users finally left en masse after its sale to a Russian media company which enacted <a href=\"https://mashable.com/article/livejournal-russian-law\">homophobic and anti-politics policies</a> \u2014 we haven\u2019t seen anything on the level of this year\u2019s. Millions of Twitter users quit following Elon Musk\u2019s acquisition, and now <a href=\"https://www.adweek.com/social-marketing/ripples-through-reddit-as-advertisers-weather-moderators-strike/\">most of Reddit is offline</a>.</p><p>Reddit is the perfect testbed for this kind of collective user action. Each individual subreddit is controlled by a set of moderators who have the power to turn their communities off \u2014 which is exactly what they\u2019ve done. But Reddit isn\u2019t the only platform with this dynamic: a 2021 report by the NYU Governance Lab suggested that <a href=\"https://virtual-communities.thegovlab.org/\">1.8 billion people use Facebook Groups every month</a>. Admins of those groups have remarkable power over the Facebook platform.</p><p>This has the potential to be a radical change. Once users realized that they have power as a community, the fundamental dynamics of these platforms changes. You can no longer engage in adversarial business practices: there\u2019s nothing wrong with making money, but it will need to be in a way that aligns with the people who give a platform its value.</p><p>Not only should that give the leadership of more established Web 2.0 businesses pause, it should inform early decisions by both investors and founders of any new collaborative platform on the internet. An adversarial business model, or a hand-wavey one like \u201cselling data\u201d, has the potential to deeply harm the value of a venture that depends on its users further down the road.</p><p>The health, trust, and safety of a platform\u2019s community is paramount. The potential for collective action means that, finally, users can have some say in how the platforms they use are run. We may even see more platforms move to co-operative and community-owned models as a way to ensure that they remain aligned with their ecosystems: it\u2019s not just good ethics, but it\u2019s good business sense in a world where users, admins, and third-party app developers understand that they have the power to leave.</p><p>We may even see moderator\u2019s unions, providing <a href=\"https://aflcio.org/what-unions-do/empower-workers/collective-bargaining\">collective bargaining</a>, advice, and other benefits for people who run communities across platforms. Perhaps even bonuses like negotiated healthcare that industrial unions have long provided. There\u2019s honestly no reason why not: these people are the direct drivers of millions upon millions of dollars for platform owners. They have power; they just have to stand up and use it.</p>"
    },
    "author": {
        "type": "card",
        "name": "Ben Werdmuller",
        "url": "https://werd.io/profile/benwerd",
        "photo": "https://werd.io/file/5d388c5fb16ea14aac640912/thumb.jpg"
    },
    "post-type": "article",
    "_id": "37932438",
    "_source": "191",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@hollie",
        "url": "https://social.coop/@hollie",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.coop/@hollie/110544268242622332",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I love all the <a href=\"https://social.coop/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> and <a href=\"https://social.coop/tags/SmallWeb\">#<span>SmallWeb</span></a> talk but I still don't see a lot of discussion of how to get The Average User (doesn't code, doesn't want to learn) into it. I stand on a fence line where I know just enough to tinker on my own site, but I can't seem to haul \"regular\" people over the fence - they're too intimidated and they aren't interested in the work. A lot of people already over the fence don't seem to notice that whole excluded group anymore. So...we just leave them? Is that the plan?</p>",
        "text": "I love all the #IndieWeb and #SmallWeb talk but I still don't see a lot of discussion of how to get The Average User (doesn't code, doesn't want to learn) into it. I stand on a fence line where I know just enough to tinker on my own site, but I can't seem to haul \"regular\" people over the fence - they're too intimidated and they aren't interested in the work. A lot of people already over the fence don't seem to notice that whole excluded group anymore. So...we just leave them? Is that the plan?"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-14T19:41:11+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37931539",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@murid",
        "url": "https://social.yesterweb.org/@murid",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.yesterweb.org/@murid/110543747907093878",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>Is there a really simple guide to static site generators? </p><p>Search engines are failing me and I have no idea where to start with them.</p><p><a href=\"https://social.yesterweb.org/tags/indieweb\">#<span>indieweb</span></a></p>",
        "text": "Is there a really simple guide to static site generators? Search engines are failing me and I have no idea where to start with them.#indieweb"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-14T17:28:51+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37929845",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@bekopharm",
        "url": "https://social.tchncs.de/@bekopharm",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://social.tchncs.de/@bekopharm/110541260703240506",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p><span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://cmdr.social/@kaipelzel\">@<span>kaipelzel</span></a></span> <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://mastodon.social/@GreyAreaUK\">@<span>GreyAreaUK</span></a></span> <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://mstdn.social/@67MistakeNot\">@<span>67MistakeNot</span></a></span> online presences come and go. With <a href=\"https://social.tchncs.de/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a> principles it's at least in your own hand what of your stuff survives and how long.</p><p>I've even stuff important to me still on my blog that is no longer available on Google+, Facebook, Twitter or even Diaspora. It survived all so far.</p><p>The <a href=\"https://social.tchncs.de/tags/POSSE\">#<span>POSSE</span></a> principle is IMHO key: Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Makes pulling the plug a lot easier.</p><p>I'd not want to be associated with Twitter any more, for example.</p>",
        "text": "@kaipelzel @GreyAreaUK @67MistakeNot online presences come and go. With #IndieWeb principles it's at least in your own hand what of your stuff survives and how long.I've even stuff important to me still on my blog that is no longer available on Google+, Facebook, Twitter or even Diaspora. It survived all so far.The #POSSE principle is IMHO key: Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Makes pulling the plug a lot easier.I'd not want to be associated with Twitter any more, for example."
    },
    "published": "2023-06-14T06:56:19+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37916812",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}

{
    "type": "entry",
    "author": {
        "name": "@stephenharlow",
        "url": "https://mastodon.social/@stephenharlow",
        "photo": null
    },
    "url": "https://mastodon.social/@stephenharlow/110541120523565493",
    "content": {
        "html": "<p>I think <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://hcommons.social/@kfitz\">@<span>kfitz</span></a></span> would love <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://social.lol/@sophie\">@<span>sophie</span></a></span> Koonin who's excited that \"<a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/Webrings\">#<span>Webrings</span></a> are making a comeback\". Like <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://hcommons.social/@kfitz\">@<span>kfitz</span></a></span>, she wants \"to bring the magic of the old days into the present day\" with movements like the <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/IndieWeb\">#<span>IndieWeb</span></a>. Here's <span class=\"h-card\"><a class=\"u-url\" href=\"https://social.lol/@sophie\">@<span>sophie</span></a></span> at <a href=\"https://mastodon.social/tags/btconf\">#<span>btconf</span></a> repeating with feeling that \"building a website is a radical act\" <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZUqa-lTbnU&amp;t=1877s\"><span>https://www.</span><span>youtube.com/watch?v=2ZUqa-lTbn</span><span>U&amp;t=1877s</span></a></p>",
        "text": "I think @kfitz would love @sophie Koonin who's excited that \"#Webrings are making a comeback\". Like @kfitz, she wants \"to bring the magic of the old days into the present day\" with movements like the #IndieWeb. Here's @sophie at #btconf repeating with feeling that \"building a website is a radical act\" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZUqa-lTbnU&t=1877s"
    },
    "published": "2023-06-14T06:20:40+00:00",
    "post-type": "note",
    "_id": "37916661",
    "_source": "7235",
    "_is_read": false
}